Mamdanis $54m mass engagement office did little to get out the vote with questionable campaign

The Mayor’s controversial, $54-million office of “Mass Engagement” repeatedly spammed New Yorkers with Mamdani-branded pleas to vote leading up to the primaries this week, in what some critics called a barely legal campaign that had little effect on turnout.The newly created unit — which has been slammed as a “propaganda office” — spent weeks emailing and texting Big Apple voters with reminders about the June primaries that was denounced by some as a publicly funded electioneering effort by the mayor.“There are some things that are legal but unethical, this is one of them,” one city political operative said of the effort.The effort — which included Mamdani staffers approaching revelers at the Knicks ticker tape parade — was ripped for featuring ads with the mayor’s name and font similar to his campaign and similar to ads that were run for his slate of endorsed socialist candidates for Congress.“If it looks like electioneering, reads like electioneering and quacks like electioneering, it’s abusing government resources for politics,” said one former Eric Adams official.

“Imagine this had the name of any other mayor, COIB [Conflict of Interest Board] would be shining a light in everybody’s eyes.”Elected officials are not allowed to use their office to sway people on how to vote and have typically kept their names off of any get-out-the-vote campaigns to ensure they do not inadvertently run afoul of city ethics laws.Such efforts are historically handled by the city’s independent Campaign Finance Board.And despite allegedly blurring the lines of electioneering, the campaign seems to have had little effect.Roughly 570,000 people cast their ballots on Tuesday, just about 40,000 more votes than in 2022, the last off-year election, but with far fewer competitive races on the ballot.Turnout last June came in at just over 1.1 million.Mamdani endorsed Claire Valdez in New York’s 7th Congressional District, Darializa Avila Chevalier in...